Fast Start: Next stop, Japan: He likes a challenge

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Twenty-year-old Jaquan Outlaw is off to a fast start.

A native of Newport News, Va., he earned the prestigious Gates Millennium Scholarship—one of 1,000 high school students to receive it nationwide—in his senior year. The honor covers full tuition to any college of his choice in the U.S. The scholarship is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to highlight academic excellence and provide opportunities for outstanding minority students.

Ready to leave his state and looking, he says, for a college with a great reputation, Outlaw chose Rochester Institute of Technology.

Outlaw attended New Horizons Governor’s School for Science and Technology. Governor’s schools are highly competitive programs for Virginia’s most gifted students. Outlaw challenged himself academically and found a way to apply course work in engineering: As a high-schooler, he was placed at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., as a 3D modeling intern.

“I went to NASA because they tried to find something related to what you want to do,” Outlaw says. “I wanted to do something with video game development at the time. I was integrating something from a 3D modeling program into a gaming environment. It was pretty cool, a great experience. It ignited that interest.”

Outlaw sought advice from people he respected. The chief engineer at the Langley center is a 1990 RIT alumnus, Clayton Turner, whose RIT recommendation was a big reason Outlaw sought out the school, he says. He also received guidance from his high school friend Jonathan Bowman, who helped him see how business might be a good fit for his future.

“He goes here; he’s a year ahead of me,” Outlaw says of his friend. “He doesn’t do things for (no) reason; he always thinks about things before he goes places.”

Outlaw expects his extroverted nature to serve him well in the business world one day.

“Most leaders tend to be extroverted whether they started that way or not. …  Being outspoken, charismatic and motivational will allow a business leader to run a great company and have employees that love to work for that particular leader, and that’s the track I’m on.”

As a third-year student in Saunders College of Business, Outlaw is working toward a degree in new media marketing with a minor in Web design and an immersion in Japanese. He wants to find a job in marketing and advertising down south after college and plans someday to own his own firm.

Last summer, in an internship in NASA’s Langley Aerospace Research Student Scholars program, Outlaw worked on technical writing in the Small Business Innovation and Research department. His work at Langley not only has enriched his experience but has shown him how businesses operate on the inside, he says.

“Most of the people (at NASA) are real down-to-earth people,” he notes.

Challenging himself during school and outside of school has always been part of Outlaw’s life. He chose to study Japanese in part because of the complexity of the language. After three years of learning the language, he plans to study abroad in Tokyo next spring.

“I really just like the culture,” Outlaw says. “It’s a very strong language, very powerful and one of the harder ones to learn. It’s always good to learn different languages.”

In fact, throughout his life he has been willing to try things outside of his comfort zone. He says close friends call him a brainiac.

“I guess I’m just the brainy person. I’ve just always been interested (in things). I kind of jump out there and just do things that are very different for me and try my best at it.”

Outlaw says the challenges he has faced—among them, housing and financial constraints growing up—have served to motivate him.

“Just always stay self-motivated because outside things can de-motivate you,” Outlaw says. “You’ve got to keep pushing yourself always; don’t just think about the negatives about what’s going to happen. If you think it’s cool, go ahead and do it. Just do the work; it’s really simple.”

12/5/14 (c) 2014 Rochester Business Journal. To obtain permission to reprint this article, call 585-546-8303 or email [email protected].